Part 22

"I was not going to disclaim it," said Fay, quickly looking up at him with a rapid glance, half penitence, half irritation. "I always tell the truth; but I was _not_ thinking exactly that; I don't want any of Sydie's friends--I detest boys--but I certainly _was_ thinking that as you look down on everything that we all delight in, I fancied you and the Beeches will hardly agree. If I am rude, you must not be angry; you wanted me to tell you the truth."

Keane smiled again.

"Do I look down on the things you delight in? I hardly know enough of you, as we have only addressed about six syllables to each other, to be able to judge what you like and what you don't like; but certainly I must admit, that caressing the little round heads of those puppies yonder, which seemed to afford you such extreme rapture, would not be any source of remarkable gratification to me."

Fay looked up at him and laughed.

"Well, I am fond of animals as you are fond of books. Is it not an open question whether the live dog or sheepskin is not as good as the dead Morocco or Russian leather?"

"Is it an open question, whether Macaulay's or Arago's brain weighs no more than a cat's or a puppy's?"

"Brain!" said impudent little Fay; "are your great men always as honest and as faithful as my poor little Snowdrop? I have an idea that Sheridan's brains were often obscured by brandy; that Richelieu had the weakness to be prouder of his bad poems than his magnificent policies; and that Pope and Byron had the folly to be more tenacious of a glance at their physical defect than an onslaught on their noblest works. I could mention a good many other instances where brain was not always a voucher for corresponding strength of character."

Keane was surprised to hear a sensible speech from this volatile little puss, and honored her by answering her seriously.

"Say, rather, Miss Morton, that those to whom many temptations fall should have many excuses made. Where the brain preponderates, excelling in creative faculty and rapid thought, there will the sensibilities be proportionately acute. The vivacity and vigorous life which produced the rapid flow of Sheridan's eloquence led him into the dissipation which made him end his days in a spunging-house. Men of cooler minds and natures must not presume to judge him. They had not his temptation; they cannot judge of his fault. Richelieu, in all probability, amused himself with his verses as he amused himself with his white kitten and its cork, as a _delassement_; had he piqued himself upon his poetry, as they say, he would have turned poetaster instead of politician. As for the other two, you must remember that Pope's deformity made him a subject of ridicule to the woman he was fool enough to worship, and Byron, poor fellow, was over-susceptible on all points, or he would scarcely have allowed the venomed arrows from the Scotch Reviewers to wound him, nor would he have cared for the desertion of a wife who was to him like ice to fire. When you are older, you will learn that it is very dangerous and unjust to say this thing is right, that wrong, that feeling wise, or this foolish; for all temperaments are different, and the same circumstances may produce very different effects. Your puppies will grow up with dissimilar characters; how much more so, then, must men?"

Miss Fay was quiet for a minute, then she flashed her mischievous eyes on him.

"Certainly; but then, by your own admission, you have no right to decide that your love for mathematics is wise, and my love for Snowdrop foolish; it may be quite _au contraire_. Perhaps, after all, I may have 'chosen the better part.'"

"Fay, go in and dress for dinner," interrupted the General, trotting up; "your tongue would run on forever if nobody stopped it; you're no exception to your sex on that point. Is she?"

Keane laughed.

"Perhaps Miss Morton's fraenum, like Sydie's, was cut too far in her infancy, and therefore she has been 'unbridled' ever since."

"In all things!" cried little Fay. "Nobody has put the curb on me yet, and nobody ever shall."

"Don't be too sure, Fay," cried Sydie. "Rarey does wonders with the wildest fillies. Somebody may bring you down on your knees yet."

"You'll have to see to that, Sydie," laughed the General. "Come, get along, child, to your toilette. I never have my soup cold and my curry overdone. To wait for his dinner is a stretch of good nature, and patience that ought not to be expected of any man."

The soup was not cold nor the curry overdone, and the dinner was pleasant enough, in the long dining-room, with the June sun streaming in through its bay-windows from out the brilliant-colored garden, and the walls echoing with the laughter of Sydie and his cousin, the young lady keeping true to her avowal of "not caring for Plato's presence." "Plato," however, listened quietly, peeling his peaches with tranquil amusement; for if the girl talked nonsense, it was clever nonsense, as rare, by the way, and quite as refreshing as true wit.

"My gloves are safe; you're too afraid of him, Fay," whispered Sydie, bending forwards to give her some hautboys.

"Am I?" cried Miss Fay, with a _moue_ of supreme contempt. Neither the whisper nor the _moue_ escaped Keane, as he talked with the governor on model drainage.

"Where's my hookah, Fay?" asked the General, after dessert. "Get it, will you, my pet?"

"Voila!" cried Miss Fay, lifting the narghile from the sideboard. Then taking some cigars off the mantelpiece, she put one in her own mouth, struck a fusee, and, handing the case to Keane, said, with a saucy smile in her soft bright eyes, though, to tell the truth, she was a little bit afraid of taking liberties with him:

"If you are not above such a sublunary indulgence, will you have a cigar with me?"

"With the greatest pleasure," said Keane, with a grave bow; "and if you would like to further rival George Sand, I shall be very happy to give you the address of my tailor."

"Thank you exceedingly; but as long as crinoline is the type of the sex that are a little lower than the angels, and ribbon-ties the seal of those but a trifle better than Mephistopheles, I don't think I will change it," responded Little Fay, contemptuously, as she threw herself down on a couch with an indignant defiant glance, and puffed at her Manilla.

"I _hate_ him, Sydie," said the little lady, vehemently, that night.

"Do you, dear?" answered the Cantab; "you see, you've never had anybody to be afraid of, or had any man neglect you before."

"He may neglect me if he please, I am sure I do not care," rejoined Fay, disdainfully; "only I do wish, Sydie, that you had never brought him here to make us all uncomfortable."

"He don't make me uncomfortable, quite otherwise; nor yet the governor; you're the only victim, Fay."

Fay saw little enough of Keane for the next week or two. He was out all day with Sydie trout-fishing, or walking over his farms with the General, or sitting in the study reading, and writing his articles for the _Cambridge Journal_, _Leonville's Mathematical Journal_, or the _Westminster Review_. But when she was with him, there was no mischief within her reach that Miss Fay did not perpetrate. Keane, to tease her, would condemn--so seriously that she believed him--all that she loved the best; he would tell her that he admired quiet, domestic women; that he thought girls should be very subdued and retiring; that they should work well, and not care much for society; at all of which, being her extreme antipodes, Little Fay would be vehemently wrathful. She would get on her pony without any saddle in her evening dress, and ride him at the five-bar gate in the stable-yard; she would put on Sydie's smoking-cap, and look very pretty in it, and take a Queen's on the divan of the smoking-room, reading _Bell's Life_, and asking Keane how much he would bet on the October; she would spend all the morning making wreaths of roses, dressing herself and the puppies up in them, inquiring if it was not a laudable and industrious occupation. There was no nonsense or mischief Fay would not imagine and forthwith commit, and anything they wanted her not to do she would do straightway, even to the imperilling of her own life and limb. She tried hard to irritate or rouse "Plato," as she called him, but Plato was not to be moved, and treated her as a spoilt child, whom he alone had sense enough to resist.

"It will be great folly for you to attempt it, Miss Morton. Those horses are not fit to be driven by any one, much less by a woman," said Keane, quietly, one morning.

They were in the stable-yard, and chanced to be alone when a new purchase of the governor's--two scarcely broken-in thorough-bred colts--were brought with a new mail-phaeton into the yard, and Miss Fay forthwith announced her resolution of driving them round the avenue. The groom that came with them told her they were almost more than he could manage, their own coachman begged and implored, Keane reasoned quietly, all to no purpose. The rosebud had put out its little wilful thorns; Keane's words added fuel to the fire. Up she sprang, looking the daintiest morsel imaginable perched up on that very exalted box-seat, told the horrified groom to mount behind, and started them off, lifting her hat with a graceful bow to "Plato," who stood watching the phaeton with his arms folded and his cigar in his mouth.

Soon after, he started in the contrary direction, for the avenue circled the Beeches in an oval of four miles, and he knew he should meet her coming back. He strolled along under the pleasant shadow of the great trees, enjoying the sunset and the fresh air, and capable of enjoying them still more but for an inward misgiving. His presentiment was not without its grounds. He had walked about a mile and a half round the avenue, when a cloud of dust told him what was up, and in the distance came the thorough-breds, broken away as he had prophesied, tearing along with the bits between their teeth, Little Fay keeping gallantly hold of the ribbons, but as powerless over the colts now they had got their heads as the groom leaning from the back seat.

On came the phaeton, bumping, rattling, oscillating, threatening every second to be turned over. Keane caught one glance of Fay's face, resolute and pale, and of her little hands grasping the ribbons, till they were cut and bleeding with the strain. There was nothing for it but to stand straight in the animals' path, catch their heads, and throw them back on their haunches. Luckily, his muscles were like iron--luckily, too, the colts had come a long way, and were not fresh. He stood like a rock, and checked them; running a very close risk of dislocating his arms with the shock, but saving little Fay from destruction. The colts stood trembling, the groom jumped out and caught the reins, Keane amused himself silently with the mingled penitence, vexation, shame, and rebellion visible in the little lady's face.

"Well," said he, quietly, "as you were so desirous of breaking your neck, will you ever forgive me for defeating your purpose?"

"Pray don't!" cried Fay, passionately. "I do thank you so much for saving my life; I think it so generous and brave of you to have rescued me at such risk to yourself. I feel that I can never be grateful enough to you, but don't talk in that way. I know it was silly and self-willed of me."

"It was; that fact is obvious."

"Then I shall make it more so," cried Miss Fay, with her old wilfulness. "I do feel very grateful, and I would tell you so, if you would let me; but if you think it has made me afraid, you are quite wrong, and so you shall see."

And before he could interfere, or do more than mechanically spring up after her, she had caught the reins from the groom, and started the trembling colts off again. But Keane put his hand on the ribbons.

"Foolish child; are you mad?" he said, so gravely yet so gently that Fay let them go, and let him drive her back to the stable-yard, where she sprang out, and rushed away to her own room, terrified the governor with a few vehement sentences, which gave him a vague idea that Keane was murdered and both Fay's legs broken, and then had a private cry all to herself, with her arms round Snowdrop's neck, curled up in one of the drawing-room windows, where she had not been long when the General and Keane passed through, not noticing her, hidden as she was, in curtains, cushions, and flowers.

"She's a little wilful thing, Keane," the General was saying, "but you mustn't think the worse of her for that."

"I don't. I am sick of those conventional young ladies who agree with everything one says to them--who keep all the frowns for mothers and servants, and are as serene as a cloudless sky abroad, smile blandly on all alike, and haven't an opinion of their own."

"Fay's plenty of opinions of her own," chuckled the General; "and she tells 'em pretty freely, too. Bless the child, she's not ashamed of any of her thoughts and never will be."

"I hope not. Your little niece can do things that no other young lady could and they are so pretty in her that it would be a thousand pities for her to grow one atom less natural and wilful. Grapes growing wild are charming--grapes trained to a stake are ruined. I assure you, if I were you, I would not scold her for driving those colts to-day. High spirits and love of fun led her on, and the courage and presence of mind she displayed are too rare among her sex for us to do right in checking them."

"To be sure, to be sure," assented the governor, gleefully. "God bless the child, she's one among a thousand, sir. Cognac, not milk and water. There's the dinner-bell; confound it."

Whereat the General made his exit, and Keane also; and Fay kissed the spaniel with even more passionate attachment than ordinary.

"Ah, Snowdrop, I don't hate him any more; he is a darling!"

One glowing August morning Keane was in the study pondering whether he would go to his moor or not. The General had besought him to stay. His gamekeeper wrote him that it was a horribly bad rainy season in Invernessshire; the trout and the rabbits were very good sport in a mild way here. Altogether, Keane felt half disposed to keep where he was, when a shadow fell across his paper; and, as he looked up, he saw in the open window the English rosebud.

"Is it not one of the open questions, Mr. Keane," asked Fay, "whether it is very wise to spend all this glorious morning shut out of the sight of the sun-rays and the scent of the flowers?"

"How have _you_ been spending it, then?"

"Putting bouquets in all the rooms, cleaning my aviary, talking to the puppies, and reading Jocelyn under the limes in the shrubberies--all very puerile, but all very pleasant. Perhaps if you descended to a lazy day like that now and then, you might be none the worse!"

"Is that a challenge? Will you take me under the limes?"

"No, indeed! I do not admit men who despise them to my gardens of Armida, any more than you would admit me into your Schools. I have as great a scorn for a skeptic as you have for a tyro."

"Pardon me. I have no scorn for a tyro. But you would not come to the Accademe; you dislike 'Plato' too much."

Fay looked up at him half shyly, half mischievously.

"Yes, I do dislike you, when you look down on me as Richelieu might have looked down on his kitten."

"Liking to see its play?" said Keane, half sadly. "Contrasting its gay insouciance with his own toil and turmoil, regretting, perhaps, the time when trifles made his joy as they did his kitten's? If I were to look on you so, there would not be much to offend you."

"You do not think so of me, or you would speak to me as if I were an intelligent being, not a silly little thing."

"How do you know I think you silly?"

"Because you think all women so."

"Perhaps; but then you should rather try to redeem me from my error in doctrine. Come, let us sign a treaty of peace. Take me under the limes. I want some fresh air after writing all day; and in payment I will teach you Euclid, as you vainly beseeched your cousin to do yesterday."

"Will you?" cried Fay, eagerly. Then she threw back her head. "I never am won by bribes."

"Nor yet by threats? What a difficult young lady you are. Come, show me your shrubbery sanctum now you have invaded mine."

The English rosebud laid aside its wilful thorns, and Fay, a little less afraid of her Plato, and therefore a little less defiant to him, led him over the grounds, filled his hands with flowers, showed him her aviary, read some of Jocelyn to him, to show him, she said, that Lamartine was better than the Oedipus in Coloneus, and thought, as she dressed for dinner, "I wonder if he does despise me--he has such a beautiful face, if he were not so haughty and cold!"

The next day Keane gave her an hour of Euclid in the study. Certainly The Coach had never had such a pretty pupil; and he wished every dull head he had to cram was as intelligent as this fair-haired one. Fay was quick and clever; she was stimulated, moreover, by his decree concerning the stupidity of all women; she really worked as hard as any young man studying for degrees when they supposed her fast asleep in bed, and she got over the Pons Asinorum in a style that fairly astonished her tutor.

The Coach did not dislike his occupation either; it did him good, after his life of solitude and study, something as the kitten and cork did Richelieu good after his cabinets and councils; and Little Fay, with her flowers and fun, mischief and impudence, and that winning wilfulness which it amused him gradually to tame down, unbent the chillness which had grown upon him. He was the better for it, as a man after hard study or practice is the better for some fresh sea-breezes, and some days of careless dolce.

"Well, Fay, have you had another poor devil flinging himself at your feet by means of a postage-stamp?" said Sydie one morning at breakfast. "You can't disguise anything from me, your most interested, anxious, and near and dear relative. Whenever the governor looks particularly stormy I see the signs of the times, that if I do not forthwith remove your dangerously attractive person, all the bricks, spooneys, swells, and do-nothings in the county will speedily fill the Hanwell wards to overflowing."

"Don't talk such nonsense, Sydie," said Fay, impatiently, with a glance at Keane, as she handed him his chocolate.

"Ah! deuce take the fellows," chuckled the General. "Love, devotion, admiration! What a lot of stuff they do write. I wonder if Fay were a little beggar, how much of it all would stand the test? But we know a trick worth two of that. Try those sardines, Keane. House is let, Fay--eh? House is let; nobody need apply. Ha, ha!"

And the General took some more curry, laughing till he was purple, while Fay blushed scarlet, a trick of which she was rarely guilty; Sydie smiled, and Keane picked out his sardines with calm deliberation.

"Hallo! God bless my soul!" burst forth the General again. "Devil take me! I'll be hanged if I stand it! Confound 'em all! I do call it hard for a man not to be able to sit at his breakfast in peace. Good Heavens! what will come to the country, if all those little devils grow up to be food for Calcraft? He's actually pulling the bark off the trees, as I live! Excuse me, I _can't_ sit still and see it."

Wherewith the General bolted from his chair, darted through the window, upsetting three dogs, two kittens, and a stand of flowers in his exit, and bolted breathlessly across the park with the poker in his hand.

"Bless his old heart! Ain't he a brick?" shouted Sydie. "Do excuse me, Fay, I must go and hear him blow up that boy sky-high, and give him a shilling for tuck afterwards; it will be so rich."

The Cantab made his exit, and Fay busied herself calming the kittens' minds, and restoring the dethroned geraniums. Keane read his _Times_ for ten minutes, then looked up.

"Miss Morton, where is your tongue? I have not heard it for a quarter of an hour, a miracle that has never happened in the two months I have been at the Beeches."

"You do not want to hear it."

"What! am I in _mauvais odeur_ again?" smiled Keane. "I thought we were good friends. Have you found the Q. E. D. to the problem I gave you?"

"To be sure!" cried Fay, exultantly. And kneeling down by him, she went through the whole thing in exceeding triumph.

"You are a good child," said her tutor, smiling, in himself amazed at this volatile little thing's capacity for mathematics. "I think you will be able to take your degree, if you like. Come, do you hate me now, Fay?"

"No," said Fay, a little shyly. "I never hated you, I always admired you; but I was afraid of you, though I would never confess it to Sydie."

"Never be afraid of me," said Keane, putting his hand on hers as it lay on the arm of his chair. "You have no cause. You can do things few girls can; but they are pretty in you, where they might be--not so pretty in others. _I_ like them at the least. You are very fond of your cousin, are you not?"

"Of Sydie? Oh, I love him dearly!"

Keane took his hand away, and rose, as the General trotted in:

"God bless my soul, Keane, how warm it is! Confoundedly hot without one's hat, I can tell you. Had my walk all for nothing, too. That cursed little idiot wasn't trespassing after all. Stephen had set him to spud out the daisies, and I'd thrashed the boy before I'd listen to him. Devil take him!"

August went out and September came in, and Keane stayed on at the Beeches. They were pleasant days to them all, knocking over the partridges right and left, enjoying a cold luncheon under the luxuriant hedges, and going home for a dinner, full of laughter, and talk, and good cookery; and Fay's songs afterwards, as wild and sweet in their way as a goldfinch's on a hawthorn spray.

"You like Little Fay, don't you, Keane?" said the General, as they went home one evening.

Keane looked startled for a second.

"Of course," he said, rather haughtily. "That Miss Morton is very charming every one must admit."

"Bless her little heart! She's a wild little filly, Keane, but she'll go better and truer than your quiet broken-in ones, who wear the harness so respectably, and are so wicked and vicious in their own minds. And what do you think of my boy?" asked the General, pointing to Sydie, who was in front. "How does he stand at Cambridge?"

"Sydie? Oh, he's a nice young fellow. He is a great favorite there, and he is--the best things he can be--generous, sweet-tempered, and honorable----"

"To be sure," echoed the General, rubbing his hands. "He's a dear boy--a very dear boy. They're both exactly all I wished them to be, dear children; and I must say I am delighted to see 'em carrying out the plan I had always made for 'em from their childhood."

"Being what, General, may I ask?"

"Why, any one can see, as plain as a pikestaff, that they're in love with each other," said the General, glowing with satisfaction; "and I mean them to be married and happy. They dote on each other, Keane, and I sha'n't put any obstacles in their way. Youth's short enough, Heaven knows; let 'em enjoy it, say I, it don't come back again. Don't say anything to him about it; I want to have some fun with him. They've settled it all, of course, long ago; but he hasn't confided in me, the sly dog. Trust an old campaigner, though, for twigging an _affaire de coeur_. Bless them both, they make me feel a boy again. We'll have a gay wedding, Keane; mind you come down for it. I dare say it'll be at Christmas."

Keane walked along, drawing his cap over his eyes. The sun was setting full in his face.

"Well, what sport?" cried Fay, running up to them.

"Pretty fair," said Keane, coldly, as he passed her.